Archive of Our Own

Ronan is thirteen when he begins to feel the Oath inside him.

At first he ignores it. It’s just words floating across his mind every now and then, and while he senses there’s something special about these ones… well, it’s not as though other peoples’ words are a weird thing to find in his head. He reads a lot, he’s obsessive about learning the lyrics to his favourite songs, and he memorizes poetry because his mother used to make him, once she discovered he had a knack for it, and it’s a habit he’s never really been able to break. It means he can keep his favourite poems with him, and no one sees him reading poetry, which he’s gathered is not something that ordinary boys his age do.

(Not that he thinks of himself as particularly ordinary. There’s the aforementioned affinity for words, which is more of a girl thing, he thinks, though that worries him less than the thought of what his father would say if he knew about the hot rush on longing he feels when he sees his friend Cathal with his girlfriend and can’t figure out whether it’s him or her that he envies.)

So he’s used to the presence of thoughts not his own drifting across his mind, and when these words first start rolling around in his head he thinks he must have read them somewhere, or heard them when he was very young. He wants to say them out loud, to see if that helps him place them, and he almost does when he is suddenly seized by the unshakeable feeling that these are words that should not be spoken aloud unless the speaker really means them. Because they will change something. They’ll change everything. They’ll change him.

Over the course of a few weeks he does a lot of thinking (brooding, his mother calls it disparagingly, but he can't help the way his brow furrows when he's deep in thought, and the idea that he should change it, just to make people more comfortable, is another one of those things about the world that makes him want to burn it all down and build it anew). He comes to understand that the wild thoughts chasing each other through his head, unfurling across his consciousness, are facts. Knowledge about wizardry.

Learning about the Powers, about the creation of the Universe and of Ireland, is a bit disconcerting for someone who was just beginning to embrace agnosticism, something which felt new and exciting and right for him, with the added bonus of being a quiet form of rebellion, another thing he can do to make himself not his father’s son. (He’s been reading up on puberty as well, but so far nothing’s been able to give him a good reason why having his father’s name suddenly feels horrible and suffocating instead of something to be proud of.) It’s odd to find his head full of the knowledge that there really is something out there. Not in the same way his parents figure there is. Nothing that requires him to confess his sins or pray the Rosary. But something. Something bigger and wilder and more purely logical than they or the church could ever imagine.

~

On his fourteenth birthday he can feel that he needs to make a decision. Say those words, that poem that he’s sure he’s never seen or heard anywhere before, out loud, become a wizard… or be an ordinary human forever.

If he chooses the ordinary, he’ll forget all the knowledge he’s gained. The idea is simultaneously unthinkable and welcoming. But as terrified as he is of never being normal again, of taking on a responsibility he’s not sure he can meet...if he’s honest with himself (which the Knowledge is telling him he needs to be if he goes through with this, though he isn’t sure he’s brave enough) he’s even more terrified of the alternative. He can’t not be a wizard, something inside of him screams. There’s too much wrong with the universe, and while he’s not convinced it needs him, he’s fairly certain that if he declines he’ll spend his life searching for another way to fight entropy that’s half as effective. Or, even worse, maybe he won’t. Maybe he’ll grow up and not care about any of it, just accept the world as it is, get caught up in the rush, maybe even help it die faster.
And that right there is the most terrifying thought of all.

So he says the words.

~

The next morning nothing feels different, really. He gets dressed for school, attends his lessons, argues with his teachers, eats lunch with a group of boys who hang on every word he says. All is as it usually is. It’s not until he’s walking home that anything out of the ordinary happens at all.

In an instant, everything is different. One minute he’s sauntering up the street, hands in the pockets of his trousers, tie undone, jumper slung over one shoulder, eager to change out of his uniform and idly thinking about trying to track down another wizard, so he can be sure he hasn’t gone mad; the next minute the road and all the buildings are gone. There’s a flash, quickly followed by a thunderclap louder than any he’s ever heard before, and just as suddenly, he’s soaked through. It’s raining hard, and it’s dark, and so cold he immediately pulls his jumper back on. It’s quickly waterlogged, though, and doesn’t make him feel much warmer.

Ronan had always been fond of thunderstorms, darkness and destruction that can tear the earth up but also nourish it, and the Knowledge is informing him that this was what is known as going sideways, that he is in another time, centuries before his own.

He feels his face split into a wide grin. As wet and as cold as he is, this is fantastic. He’s actually gone back in time, and this isn’t something he could just do again on his own, he knows. This is something special.

There’s another flash of lightning, and this time he watches as Bray Head is lit up against a roiling grey sky, and before he even hears the thunder he’s on his way there.
Clambering up the hill is a job, and he slips more than once on his way up, but he can’t help but laugh. He hasn’t done anything resembling exercise just for the craic of it in… it must be ages. His nose and throat and fingers are screaming with the chill before he’s halfway up, but the way the muscles in his legs are straining, the way he can feel his heart pounding in his chest, the way the wind is whipping his sodden hair is exhilarating.

When he reaches the top he moves as close as he dares to the far side. He feels like he’s flying and swimming at the same time, like his very soul is being tossed up by the wind while the water lays claim to his body. Then he looks down at the sea and feels his stomach drop.

There’s a boat in the water, being driven toward the rocks.

It’s a matchbox of a thing, really, but there are people on it, screaming as one, so loud he can hear them over the wind, and trying to abandon their ship and swim to shore.
But that’s wrong. They can’t get off, they’ll drown. Every last one of them.

He has to do something. If only he could calm the waves, if only he could simply say “Peace, be still” and have it work. But he’s not Jesus. He’s a wizard. And wizardry isn’t simple.

He casts around in his mind and—there! The spell presents itself to him, crackling with energy in his mind’s eye. The name of the part of the sea that holds the boat. It’s long, and extremely complicated, and dangerous. The Knowledge makes this clear by the dull ache that builds deep in his skull the longer he examines it. Doing this wizardly could cost him his life. But hesitating could very well cost every last one of those people theirs.

So he says the words. Shouts them, really, into the wind. Slowly at first, because accuracy matters, accuracy is paramount. But after a minute, it’s as though the words are speaking him, and he’s able to go faster, to describe every wave, every current, every molecule of water from the ocean floor to the spray that hits the faces of those fragile little people.
Through the gauzy electric light of the spell he can just make out the little boat, coming so close to the rocks—

He finishes the description—

—they’re so scared—

—speaks the wizard’s knot—

And then Ronan is the sea around the boat, and it’s only now that he feels himself free of his body that he realises how tight and itchy that body was, how small and spindly the thing he walks around in is compared to the freedom and power of being the sea.

He stills the water, stills himself, as much as he can; fights against the storm and wins long enough for the people in the boat to leap into the water and swim to shore
Then he can’t hold it any longer, and the wind is churning him again, the boat is going to pieces inside him and now he feels like he’s dissolving into the water, like he’s fading, like there’s not enough of him to ever be put back together into a whole person…

~

The next thing he’s aware of is that he is no longer outside. But that’s wrong, that’s very, very wrong and he thrashes wildly, reaches for the rocks, for the chill, for the salt of the sea, feels none of it. He roars. And then he’s being held down.

~

There’s a woman sitting beside his bed, pale as an overcast sky at noon. He sees that she’s holding his hand, but can’t feel it. She says something in a language he doesn’t understand.

He doesn’t know her.

~

The woman is still there, but this time there’s a man with her. There is salt water on the man’s cheeks and he tries to reach out, to touch it, but his arm isn’t working properly.

~

The next time he wakes he hears the woman say “Ronan?” and this time he knows she means him. Knows that he is a human being, like she is.

“Mum,” he says, or rather croaks, and he notices for the first time that his throat hurts.

“Oh, thank Christ,” his mother sighs. She looks drained, but relieved. She grasps his hand and this time he can feel it, warm and soft and strong against his fingers, and he tries to
press back but he hasn’t the strength for anything more than a twitch.

“Ronan, love, what happened to you?” she says as she gently brushes his fringe off his brow, and her voice is quiet, like she’s asking herself.

And though he knows she’s worried, though he thinks he wants to put her mind at ease, there is no way he can tell her what really happened without worrying her even more, and lying is not an option. So he doesn’t say anything at all.

~

When he’s finally released from hospital, his parents take him home, and they treat him like he might break at any moment. He can tell they simultaneously want to know what happened to him and fear ever finding out, don’t know which would be worse: that someone took him up the hill and left him there (after doing what to him, exactly?), or that he went up himself, that maybe he didn’t intend to ever return.

He’s not sure what to think either. He knows he’s just had his Ordeal, knows that, now that he’s survived it, he’s a proper wizard. But the Knowledge is clear that the Lone Power is usually present at a wizard’s Ordeal, and Ronan is fairly certain that all he was up against in that Ireland of long ago was the brute force of nature. That and the wizardry that almost tore his soul from his body. The Knowledge won’t tell him why his Ordeal was different though. Only that it is now over. That the Romans survived the storm.

He gets a few days more of quiet, and then one morning he wakes up and feels a new knowledge within him, one that’s simply there, clear and bright and impossible to ignore. There's somewhere he needs to go, someone he needs to meet. But the Knowledge won't tell him who.

Ronan swears, because god damn it, there are enough things inside him he doesn't understand, and realising he's been given automatic updates feels so invasive he wants to punch whatever Power is responsible for it.

He gets out of bed and gets himself ready to leave with as much dark fury as he thinks he can get away with, shutting doors a bit too loudly, and knocking a butter knife onto the floor just to hear it clatter. His mother doesn't say anything. Even his father acts like he doesn’t notice. Ronan feels even angrier and leaves the house as quickly as he can, before this hot red feeling can fly up out of him and tear at them the way it tears at him.

He waits at the bus stop, but only for a minute. The first bus that comes is headed to Enniskerry.